It Went Really Well!

First day down...it went really well.  As expected, Z was a bit of the wrench in the works at some transition points, but I hope that will work itself out as he gets used to the schedule and expectations.  If anything, the girls were disappointed we didn't do more.  All in good time.

Here are my cuties on their first day of school...totally homeschooling it in their bare feet.

100 Day

We recently celebrated 100 Day at our little homeschool.  I could not be more relieved to have reached this milestone.  We had done "number of the day" activities for every number leading up to this big culmination of the marvelous phenomenon that is 100!  If I ever have to do "number of the day" again, I think I'll move to Mars.

Making necklaces with 100 cheerios

Showing off our hats with 10 groups of 10

How far is 100 steps?  Can you see them waaayy down there?

Second Generation Fear-Fighters

Okay, so just a few more thoughts on fear because we have had a big dose of it around here this week.

I know it is my responsibility as a parent to prepare my kiddos for the real world where scary things sometimes happen.  I have procrastinated in a bad way on some basic safety stuff because I don't want to introduce the very kinds of fear that I sometimes struggle with.  Can't I keep it all sunshine and roses for them?

I finally bit the bullet and covered fire safety during school last week.  We got cartoonish books from the library, I downloaded fun activity pages from the internet, we went to the fire station for a tour and cheesy photo ops, we made a race out of practicing our escape plan from the house.

My all-too-grown-up firstborn wasn't haven't it.  She knew good and well that fire is scary, painful business and she made it known that talking about scary stuff was not fun and games and she didn't want any part of it.  We had an uphill battle (that we're still fighting) to convince her that preparation is a good tool for fighting fear.  Knowledge may be power, but it was not very comforting to her.

By mid-week, I had the opportunity to hand down my fear-fighting tools (see what I did there? fire-fighting, fear-fighting...never mind).  As she cowered in her bed, unable to sleep, I told her about how we use truth to fight fear, putting it on like a shield and sword.  I spoke God's truth over her and gave her the tools I've used so often...talking to God about the fear, being the boss of our thoughts and making them obey the truth, singing true songs, and praying for others to take the focus off ourselves.

I picked up a new tool at the ladies' retreat I went to last weekend.  The speaker told us not to ask "What if...?" but "What would a good God do if....?"  I decided to lay this tool on the table for A.  We went there out loud because I knew her little female mind had already gone to the worst case scenario (though her worst case scenario was much easier to talk about out loud than mine).  What would our good God do if all your stuffed animals burned in a fire?  What would our good God do if our house was ruined?  What would our good God do if we got hurt trying to go out the window?  He would provide above and beyond what we could ask or imagine and let us tell the story.  Maybe that story would help someone else love God.

I don't want to pass on fear to my kids.  I'm praying hard about how to tell them what they need to know without filling their hearts with fear.  But I'm so grateful now for my own fear struggle and the tools of truth I have been given.  I wish they didn't need them, but I'm glad I can pass them down to my daughters especially, for this seems to be a battle uniquely faced by women.  I pray my girls will wield their weapons with growing trust in their power.  Together we are mighty Princess Warriors of Truth and the lies of fear will not hold us! (cue patriotic musical crescendo)

Dropping Like Flies

So that little virus Z has?  I think I got the short-lived part (hopefully), but we're dropping like flies around here.  C was up last night, then ran high fevers this afternoon.  It finally occurred to us that J's "allergy" symptoms sounded similar to the girls' complaints all week....headache, sore throat, and feeling run-down.  He might be the next to fall.

Fortunately, Z is perking up and his symptoms are slowing down.  Maybe it's a weird mix of a couple or three things?  I'm baffled.  And quite frankly, sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Having sick little ones though always make me count my blessings.  I have great access to good medicine, good doctors and good information.  I have family and friends who can help if the need arises.  And Netflix just released the third season of My Little Pony, so a screen marathon really couldn't have come at a better time.  (No lie...A did her own personal happy dance when she realized there were new episodes.  It was a little funny and a little scary.)

Praying we all hold steady or improve through the night.

Today

I confess that I cannot achieve the level of blog posts I aspire to.  Every time I want to sit down to write, my brain begs for downtime if no one else is begging for a piece of me.  But I'd still like to blog.  So I'm taking a cue from Missy over It's Almost Naptime and attempting shorter posts.  (I don't know Missy, but I'd like to.  And I'm not even going to pretend that my plate runneth over like hers does right now.)

Today, A went to her one-day enrichment co-op that we like to call "Wednesday school."  She has classes in art, Spanish, P.E., drama, character building, and music.  It's good exposure to classroom behavior and learning from someone other than mom.

While she's away, I try to have some preschool time at the house, though it is so hard to resist plugging them into a screen so I can accomplish something that appears more productive.  We compromised today.  I de-cluttered the living room while they scattered rice in my kitchen.

When A got home, we turned right around for our first return-to-gymnastics class.  The girls really enjoyed gymnastics last spring, but we chose to drop when money got tight.  When we got the wiggle room in the budget again, the girls were eager to go back.  C couldn't stop hopping through the whole class.  She stayed where she was supposed to and got nice comments about good listening, but she was so excited she could not be still.

Z's got a little tummy bug that made last night interesting.  I'm praying it's short-lived and contained to one host.

That's us.  How are you?

Rockin' the Six-Year-Old Vocab

A certain first-grader in our house is thoroughly enjoying her budding writing skills.  She goes through paper like there's no tomorrow, making lists, pictures, books.  Here's a sample of some recent favs with translation (just in case)...

Anna's List (we're working on putting the title at the top) - Duck Duck Goose, trailer ride (bike trailer), piggy back ride, read, make paper snowflakes, play the guitar, play My Little Pony church (the reader will please note that we actually accomplished all but two of the items on this day's list)

Anna's Second List - Rachel comes over to play, sleepover at the cousins, play checkers, wrestle, play chess (looks like we only got to one of those)

 I love you Mom.  I think you are awesome.  Love, Anna

For the Aggie fans - I love my Dad (with a big gig 'em thumbs up and a check mark across it).  Gig 'em wins.  I love gig 'em.  Hey, gig 'em, longhorns lost.  Good job, gig 'em.  Oh no, longhorns, you are in big trouble.  Yeah, gig 'em.  (Loving the mooing cow at the bottom with a big x on its face.)

You should know that the last piece was a real love letter because she has converted to being a longhorn fan since we moved (because she really knows what the rivalry is all about, right?).  But since she loves her dad, she made him a gig 'em picture.

The Rock House, Part Two

You're probably tired of photos of my parents' old house, so I'm sorry to say that part two of this min-series is much like the first.  Only these pics were taken by my 6-year-old.  I gave her my phone and asked her to snap photos of the things she wanted to remember about Grandma's house.  A few of the things worth remembering from her perspective...

the kitchen linoleum

the sago palm in the backyard 

that shady swing overlooking the yard

and the pavers underneath it 

the riding lawn mower that gave many a ride around the yard 

the screen door

Grandma's wind chimes

bicycle highway and chalk canvas

really gross bug-zapper

short person's view through the screen door

family photo wall

Grandpa's screen saver

toys on the red carpet

To be continued...(but I think that's all of the photos)

First Day of School

Before our house guests arrived, we had our first day of school.  I got our schoolroom all ready the night before with a fun new sign inspired by a Pinterest find.  I don't think I've ever shown you, loyal reader, our schoolroom.  Ta da...

That's my gumball sign.  We added gumballs with our ideas for making school enjoyable (i.e., being kind, waiting our turn, helping each other, listening, etc.).  I can't put much on my walls this year because Z enjoys ripping it all off too much.  Shouldn't every schoolroom have a baby gate, by the way?

These are my craigslist find cabinets.  J and my dad installed them earlier in the summer.  They are fabulous!!  J also installed our roof flashing turned magnet wall.  He's a handy guy.  I like the magnet wall because I can put independent supplies in a pencil pouch hanging from a hook on the wall.  The girls can get to them anytime.  I've also got a planning calendar up and my own notes for the week.  There's also lots of room for posting their creations and school work.

This is the other end of our schoolroom, but it's really more of a play area.  But I wanted to show off my map wall.  Strictly decorative purposes because the maps are from old National Geographics.  Again, I'll go lower with more maps when I know Z won't tear them off.

I told the girls we would be taking first day photos and I loved the results!  A asked to stay her in pj's all day, including for photos.  Then she took one photo and was done.  So very A.

C asked to put on her fanciest dress, wanted a headband and a bow, then wanted a portrait session for the next 20 minutes with silly faces, serious faces, good smiles, bad smiles.  Every bit C right now.

Getting lice the first week of school has definitely put a damper on things, but I'm so glad we homeschool!  We'll keep going, keep practicing our nice attitudes, getting down routines and figuring out realistic expectations.  Hope your year gets off to a smooth, sweet start!

House Guests

So it's always fun when a blog post generates comments, but when a post generates phone calls....!!  Wow!  The announcement of a foreign exchange student actually ranked a few phone calls!  Sweet!

When we decided to buy this big ol' house, one of the things we looked forward to doing was hosting an exchange student.  Because what better way to share the world with our kids than bringing it to our dinner table?  Sure beats traveling internationally with small children.  We have the space to share and just hope we are good representatives of our culture--both temporal and eternal.

We have been complete novices through this process and are learning as we go (like all parenting).  We chose an exchange agency because we had a friend of a friend who was a local advocate.  We chose our student because she is the oldest of several children in her home and we thought she would be comfortable in our chaos.  Other than that, it was a stab in the dark, and we couldn't be more pleased.

You'll be hearing more about H, our exchange student.  She'll be part of our family through the end of January-ish.  She's from northern Germany and is doing great with her English.  We are really impressed!  She'll turn 16 while she's here.  She arrived Thursday night after more than 24-hours en route.  We had great plans for the weekend, including taking a pic of her to introduce her to my huge readership, as well to show her around and maybe take in a local festival, but....

Friday morning we realized we had even more house guests than we thought.  I made the gruesome discovery that A and C had lice!  I wanted to crawl into the fetal position and deny my own existence for the next 48 hours.  Alas, that was not an option.  Our plans went down the drain and I began the overwhelming task ahead of me.

I started with a trip to the pharmacy for requisite tools.  Then, I made my first-ever trip through the Starbucks drive-thru for my own self-medication.  Chai latte has become my drug of choice and it helped me through the morning.  When I got home, I took each girl to the backyard and lopped off as much hair as I was comfortable with.  They both have decent little bobs now.  Then, I used that tiny little comb to go through A's thick, thick hair.  It took over an hour and a half.  C's was not so bad because her hair is so fine.

Then I gave the Cetaphil solution a try.  It was mid-afternoon by the time they were both "treated."  Next we bagged up all the stuffed animals, extra pillows and blankets.  I vacuumed, sterilized, and laundered for the rest of the day.  J came to the rescue by working from home and keeping Z out of the way.  So far, Z, J and I have been spared.  But just thinking about it makes my head light up with imaginary itches.

I'm going to say the Cetaphil trick was not particularly effective for A.  C seemed clear this morning, but A was still just as bad.  My own particular brand of torture is a contagious condition that keeps your children quarantined but at perfectly good energy levels, then re-occurs at weekly intervals for up to a month.  Yippy skippy.  Add to the equation one six-year-old with incredibly thick hair, a sensitive scalp, and a tendency to make mountains out of mole hills.  SuperMommy kryptonite trifecta!

J wanted to nail down where we had picked it up, but I knew that was futile.  Our best guess is the headphones at the library computer station.  A spent about 15 minutes trying the computer game in the kids' section.  C tried it too, but the headphones kept slipping off her head, so she didn't stay as long.  It could have been anywhere, honestly; we just don't know.  But you can rest assured, we will not ever use those headphones again.

I am so indebted to my sis-in-law, CA, who came to the rescue and whisked H away for a teenage girl shopping trip, dinner, and youth group study on Friday.  Then she came again tonight to take H to her first-ever baseball game.  Thank you, CA and R!!  You salvaged this weekend with flying colors!

A and C will stay home from church with me tomorrow and we will attempt to salvage Friday's schoolwork without Z in the mix.  Monday is a big day as we register H for high school and get a crash course in the public high school education system.

Enough rambling.  Stay tuned.  Our family motto really is "never a dull moment" and we strive to deliver.

Back to Being Six

I had to interrupt the six-year-old birthday posts with the baby-brother-walking post.  It only seemed appropriate to not make that one wait a month.  But it's been the requisite month (or six weeks) since A's birthday, so I'm getting around to posting pics of it.

-Sidebar- I use blogging as a motivator.  I only let myself post if I feel like I have gotten done what I needed to get done in a certain day/week.  Only, I never get it all done.  Then the blog posts build up to a crescendo in my head and I can't shut up my own inner monologue and I finally give in and do a slew of posts and make something else wait.  That's why I'm always late on milestone posts.   -End sidebar-

We had a bit of a conundrum over A's birthday party theme this year.  She finally was enjoying swimming and decided she wanted a pool party.  But we don't have a pool.  And our neighborhood pool is too deep for her to enjoy.  Not to mention it's crazy expensive to rent a neighborhood pool!  We may have dropped enough hints, manhandled enough conversations, and eluded to enough happy things to convince her that she really wanted a party at our house with a readily-available-at-major-retailers theme.  So, My Little Pony it was!

It was really helpful that her favorite things right now are very simple...duck, duck, goose was her first game request.  Done!  We also pinned the tail on Pinkie Pie a few times.

We had at least a dozen too many cupcakes.  Mind you, they were frosted with each of the six main Ponies' colors.  

The girls were enamored with balloon animals and face painting at several events we went to over the summer.  So Daddy twisted a few balloons and cousin R stepped in to paint cutie-marks on hands.  Although, the boys got spiders and lightning bolts.

J is amazing at his powers of persuasion and imagination.  He spun his two-balloon-trick repertoire from dogs to ponies, then pegasuses (pegasi?) and even a baby dragon.  The kids were amazed!

"What?!" you say.  "You let small children run around your house with wet paint on their hands?!"  Why, yes, I did.  It was a small price to pay to get out of making a piñata, thank you very much.  And I used an old trick up my sleeve and had each masterpiece powered with baby powder when it was done to set it.  It dulled the paint, but since everyone's looked the same, none of the kids complained.  And I haven't found any smears on my walls (yet).

Happy Birthday, A!  May the wonder of you never cease.

This is the Face of a Six-Year-Old

You can tell she's six by that stinkin' cute gap in her smile.  Oh, and the fact that I can't get a non-silly-face picture.

It's also difficult to get a picture of one cutie-pie without the other.

 They do enjoy hamming it up for the camera.

 Not to be outdone by his sisters, ladies and gentleman, the show-stealer...

Summer is Slippin' Away

We made a bucket list of the beginning of summer and I thought it was pretty relaxed.  No problem, I thought, we can do those.  Yikes!  There are three and a half weeks before school starts and we'll be cramming a few things in.

Our summer has been such a welcome break from the last year.  I desperately needed the break from homeschool.  With a new curriculum for a new year, I'm looking forward to it again and getting excited.

I had a whole slew of DIY projects to tackle over the summer, too, but I'm afraid I won't get many of those crammed in before school.  Something about being a ping-pong mom between small children makes it nearly impossible if not unenjoyable to try to get any projects done.

What have we been doing this summer?  The reading club at two libraries, getting more comfortable in the swimming pool, sleepovers with cousins, library story times, dinners with neighbors and friends, birthday parties, watching fireworks, and more screen time than I care to admit.

Early in the summer, J camped in the backyard with the girls.

They zipped up the tent early to keep the mosquitos out and played lots of go fish and read a big stack of books.  We were quite impressed that they made it through the night.  Of course, I took one for the team, and stayed inside with Z.

A has been to VBS and two day camps with a neighborhood church--one week of active, outside rough and tumble camp and another week of inside, creative choir camp.  It's been very interesting to see how differently each child behaves when one is taken out of the mix.  Good practice for fall when A will go once a week to co-op classes.

While A was at camp, I took C and Z to a kids' event downtown to see The Biscuit Brothers perform.  C gets really excited about The Biscuit Brothers.  I really think they are so special to her because she saw them perform at a street concert just after we moved and they were heavy on the crowd participation.  Very real, very fun and then she saw them on tv.  So when we had the chance to go see them again, I stretched out of my comfort zone (with the help of my sister) and made her day.

I know she looks a little creeped out, but she was elated.  She even mustered the courage to ask them a question and tell them her name clearly enough to be understood.  When we walked away, she looked up at me and exclaimed, "Mom!  They know my name!"  It was pretty cute.

We have a road trip planned to visit friends and family yet.  Plus a trip to the children's museum and a little party with the girls in A's class at church.  I have a few more items on the get-ready-for-school list.  All in all, it's been a sweet summer.  I know time is going to scream by once school gets going and Christmas will be here before we know it.  Going to make the most of these next few weeks and then grab school by the horns and relish that ride.

Picture Day

I've been wanting to get some professional pictures of the kids.  Unfortunately, I was a bit spoiled by the friends I made who were taking up professional photography and offered me reduced rates.  Sticker shock for big city photographers encouraged me to give it a go myself.

After an hour and a half and about 150 pics taken, here are half of the keepers.  (There were a total of 12 keepers--yes, 12 out of 150.)

Tell you what...those photographers work hard for the money, so hard for ya honey!  I know I earned the few smiles I got!  And I won't have the benefit of all the mad editing skillz to make them look any better than they are right now.  But, I captured this moment and we all left happy (thanks to Grandma's help). That's huge--HUGE, I tell ya.